Towards the development of the voter’s choice behaviour model: Analysis of the Egyptian 2012 presidential elections

An important stream of research in the political marketing field has focused on modelling how voters know about political parties and candidates and how they make their voting decisions which are based on received information. This article aims to reinterpret and test Newman and Sheth’s (1985) model of voter’s choice behaviour that assumes that voters’ behaviour can be driven by a combination of one or more of seven distinct cognitive domains. The study includes another two factors that may influence the choice of a given candidate: the media’s role and the candidates’ election campaigns during the election period. The results indicate a negative correlation between voting and having information about the presidential candidates and their electoral programmes in general, and this may refer to Egyptians’ desire to exercise their political rights after the revolution, despite their lack of knowledge about candidates. The article argues that the role of the media and candidates’ campaigns changed during various stages of the election, as they had limited effect in influencing the intentions of voters to elect a specific candidate and they had a bigger role in changing the intentions of some voters, which consequently persuaded them to vote for another candidate.